The Pawnbroker (19 page)

For most of the ride he just slumped in an access of exhaustion. His mind seemed empty. He sat, his mouth slightly ajar, staring at the rushing darkness of the tunnel; the roar of the train flushed his brain of the gathering crystals of memory as soon as they began to form. At about the halfway point in the ride, he experienced a sour burning in his throat; it tasted faintly of egg.

"Now even eggs," he said disgustedly, before going back to his cataleptic repose, his head rocking with the sway of the train, his eyes indifferent to the faces of many shapes, the newspapers of many tongues.

The apartment was of white brick, some twenty-five stories high. There was a huge, glass-enclosed lobby, through which Sol could see an elegant, too-orderly garden with white stone benches and floodlit shrubs. A doorman appeared. He raised his eyebrows suspiciously at the bulky, heat-rumpled man who looked to him like a seedy salesman desperate for business. But he had no case of any kind, so the doorman considered the possibility of a crackpot fanatic of even more devious purpose.

"Can I help you there, Mac?" he asked, ready at the least sign to turn the fringe politeness into bullying. "Someone here you want to see?"

"Mr. Albert Murillio," Sol answered, staring dully at the doorman's stagy white uniform.

"Well suppose I just give him a little ring for you," the man said uncertainly, reshuffling his stack of attitudes at the familiar name. "Make sure he's up there. Save you a trip." He went to the wall phone and pressed one of a long column of buttons. "Just check and make sure he's ... Oh, hello, Mr. Murillio? Oh hi, Joe, this is Sweeny, downstairs. Got a fellow down here says he wants to see your boss. What? Oh, wait, I'll ask...." He covered the phone with one hand, and quizzed Sol with his eyes. "Your name, your name," he finally said impatiently.

"Sol Nazerman. He is expecting me," the Pawnbroker said, staring out indifferently at the floodlit garden. He wondered if the vegetation were real.

Only in the almost silent ascent of the elevator did his exhaustion recede enough for him to feel apprehension again. When he stepped out at Murillio's floor, words were tumbling uselessly through his head. Which of them could he use? What did he want of the man? If
he
didn't know, how could he expect...

"Come in, Uncle," Murillio called from beyond the man in the linen jacket of a servant. "Sit down, sit down," he said as Sol came down the two steps to the sunken living room. "This is a rare honor, partner. You might have something there, putting us on a personal basis. Want a drink? Name it, I got it; Scotch, rye, bourbon, gin. Hey, you ever try this coffee-flavor brandy? I got it in Haiti. Expensive stuff."

"No thank you. I do not drink. I have a delicate stomach."

"Well, sit down, anyhow," Murillio said, wearing expansiveness like something he knew the look of but not the feeling; and, as the Pawnbroker unbent that much, he smiled energetically. "I tell you, Uncle, I often think I like to get together with you. People I come in contact with are a bunch of dumbheads. I know you're a intelligent guy, been a teacher in the old country and all. Well, I ain't had the regular education, you know, but I got a taste for the finer things. Listen, I know the real-big operators all had a feel for the big things. I read a whole bunch of books, history, art, the whole bit. I get a big kick out of it. It's the only thing that really interest me. I got dough, all the gash I want. It gets boring, you know?"

Sol studied him as he talked, amazed that the voice benefited not the least from being heard in person. It wasn't just the remoteness of the telephone conversations; the man's voice seemed to have nothing to do with his face. Murillio had powdery-white skin and the sleek blue shadow of carefully shaved, very dense beard. You were aware of how perfectly all his hair was groomed; the beard shaved fantastically close at least twice a day, the hair trimmed to perfection, the hands peculiarly hairless, as though they, too, were shaved or denuded by some strong depilatory, although the wrists erupted a few strong hairs from under the starched white cuffs, the eyebrows faultlessly curbed, the nostrils neat. Sol had the feeling that only the most careful attention kept Murillio from a hairy collapse into apishness. The shadow of beard came up to within an inch of his eyes. But there the simian quality ended. For his eyes were the pale-gray color of slush, the mixture of rain and snow before the snow has been soiled, a translucent, light-conducting texture rather than a color.

"...but sometimes all that stuff seems just a hair beyond me. Like I read a thing ... Some college kid touted me on this
Crime and Punishment.
So I read it and I understand it—it's a good story, you know, with the kid murdering the old woman. I finish it. I could tell you the thing from beginning to end. But I got this feeling, kind of irritated, like there's something I missed. The same thing happens with music. I like good music, opera particular. I got a good ear, too. But I get that same feeling like it's leaving me out of something. I get mad really."

Suddenly he was aware of the Pawnbroker staring flatly at him.

"Well, it takes a lot of thinking," he said sullenly. "Hey, if you wanted to come here to just stare at me, I could of send you a picture. Okay, what's the beef, Uncle?"

"There is something on my mind. It has been bothering me. You will find it strange but please be patient," Sol said, staring down at his hands. "It is just that..." He looked up to engage the slushy eyes. "Tell me,
do
you own the brothel down the street from me? You do, don't you?"

"Now wait a minute, what is this?"

"The house of prostitution behind the massage place, it is yours, isn't it?"

"Just a second, let's get straight before we go any farther. Are you just trying to get your nose where it don't belong or have you got something special you want to say?"

"Yes, something special," Sol said. "I will try to be clear ... even though it is perhaps not too clear to me myself. You see I have not been too well lately, tension, what have you," he said with a shrug, as though it were really of no importance. "The point is that I would try to cut down my tensions, regardless how foolish they seem even to me. They exist, they burden me. There are things in my past, never mind what, I prefer to forget about them. But they make certain things difficult for..." Some vacillation in him seemed to firm then. His face got cold and strong. "I do not want your money if it comes from the whorehouse," he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

"What's that? You got me ... what?" Murillio leaned forward, his fearsome face momentarily comical. He had the slanted expression of a half-deaf man; you would almost have expected him to cup his hand to his ear.

"We can make some other arrangement ... I do not know exactly what. Maybe I will buy you out or you will buy me out. Any way. Only
I do not want the money from the whorehouse.
"

Murillio regained his hearing, and he began to laugh, although his mouth was shaped to just a mild smile. It was as if the laughter were something from earlier in the evening and Murillio played it over now for Sol to hear, gave vent to it from behind his stiff smile.

"Oh, you're a hot one, Uncle, I got to say that. There's nothing typical about you. It's all right, it's all right, I get a kick out of it. No, really. All these other assholes I deal with—Christ, I can tell when they're gonna fart, when they're gonna smile, when they're gonna moan. They get on my nerves. I get sluggish, you know. I mean with you I keep my wits active, like in training. I can never anticipate." He was still smiling, and now his humor seemed quite real. The expression of his cold eyes was different enough from the usual to indicate some emotion approaching affection. "Okay, I'll bite; why don't you want the money from the cathouse—assuming if I
did
own a cathouse?" he asked good-naturedly.

"What difference does it make why?" Sol asked wearily.

The smile drifted off Murillio's purplish lips as easily as a casually wiped food stain. His eyes darkened, and the irritated cougar showed from under the neat, human face.

"I like you, Uncle, otherwise I would of lost patience with you long time already. But now it's getting past a joke. I'm getting a little bored. It makes a difference when you come up here and waste my time. You drop a nutty statement like that on top of my lap and I'm suppose to say, fine, fine, write the whole thing off. Don't tell me, 'What difference does it make?' It makes a difference!"

"It is personal, an idiosyncrasy, if you will. Call it an allergy, say I am allergic to brothels. Say what you want. Only I say this—I insist, I insist ... something must be done. I will sell out to you or you will sell out to me. It has been bothering me, and now I must do something about it."

Sol took a deep breath in the silence he had invoked. He exhaled it slowly, imagining he felt relief now, that he had gotten something accomplished. He made himself ignore the black-and-white beast planted motionlessly in the far corner of his eye. Slowly, casually, he scanned the soft buff walls. You must make no sudden moves with certain wild things; sharks were said to strike if you made a commotion in the water. He looked intently at the several oil paintings. They were of some insignificantly saccharine school of Italian painting; late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Girls with pitchers on their heads, homely street scenes; one was labeled "The Barber" and showed a rosy-cheeked man cutting a small boy's hair while a doting mother stood watching, the inevitable pitcher on her head. Each painting had a little lamp over it, such as are found in certain academic galleries. It suggested that the air in the room, for all its air conditioning, was dry and dusty and unlived in.

"I see you admiring my art collection. You like it?" Murillio asked in a soft, speculative voice. "Cost me a small fortune, believe me. But I like to surround myself with beauty. Maybe sometime I become a patron, hah! Sometime maybe..." He turned an enameled smile on, and his face seemed to become depthless; you imagined the mouth opened to no more than a fraction of an inch of polished granite, that the eyes began in the rounded surface. Like some half-convincing bas-relief, he aimed himself at Sol. "
But not yet, Uncle.
Okay, let's make ourselfs clear, hah. For some reason you got it in your head, or your conscience or something, that you don't want to be connect with money from a whorehouse. You got a
allergy.
Okay! So set your mind at ease, Uncle. See how patient I am. You can tell I'm a reasonable man, can't you?" He waited for Sol's stiff, wary nod. "All right, from now on I'm gonna make a special arrangement just for you."

Sol listened intently, eagerly, for a moment imagining that some incomprehensible ray of salvation might come from the lips of this man.

"From now on I'm gonna send you
different
money, see! The dough from the cathouse I'm gonna send to another associate. You I'll send only
clean
money, money from legitimate, blue-chip investments. How's that, fair or not?"

Sol's face registered the slow descent from bewilderment to anger. He opened and closed his mouth on his indignation a few times like a fish not sure of its atmosphere.

Murillio howled with laughter. It was a terrifying thing to see that barely amused face and realize that the monstrous noise of glee came from it. Sol turned his head from one side to another, as though trying to figure out where the sound
really
came from. He saw the linen-jacketed servant standing in the doorway, expressionless and vigilant, his swarthy, crushed fighter's face like the surface of a mirror aimed at the fog.

"You think I am a fool?" Sol cried out furiously. "I will not have this. No more, I say. I want to terminate our agreement. There will be no further association between us. Do not toy with me!"

The laughter stopped abruptly.

"Shut up, Uncle," Murillio said with a softness that struck the ear like a shot. He walked over to stand above Sol. His fids were lowered so his eyes seemed heavy and toxic. "Yes, I do think you're a fool. Who you think you're dealing with, Uncle, some little Jew merchant, some half-ass little 'businessman' with a vest full of pencils and scraps of paper in every pocket to write down the
big deals?
" Though he was a much shorter man than Sol, he now seemed very big, hung over the Pawnbroker like some dangerous weight. His eyes were so close that Sol could see the icy lacing of his irises. "What you
want
don't interest me one bit. I am a little concern about what you say and do though. So listen to me, Uncle, listen careful because it is very important to you." Now he leaned over and rested his hands on his knees as though he were talking to a child. "You can't get out on your terms. I want things just like they are. The very best you could hope for is that I let you out without a penny, with nothing to show for your work there except a few wrinkles. My money start you in that store; you're a partner only because it's convenient for me to have your name on the papers. Now you want to be smart, keep going like before, okay. You draw yourself a nice buck over the years, save enough for your old age maybe."

"You have no right to..."

"Let's not talk silly, hah, Uncle? I just told you the
best
you could do if you upset me. You know what else could happen?" He studied Sol's face with inhuman curiosity, like a great cat watching with unblinking interest the reactions of its prey when it cuffs with covered claws.

Sol just sat there, ignorant for the moment of both his expression and his feelings. Only it seemed this had happened before, or almost happened or been dreamed of. He tried to focus on his needs, on the tangibles he was risking, the money, the privacy it bought him. But the colorless gray eyes demanded more from him.

"Well I'll tell you in plain words, Uncle. I could "kill you." He nodded slowly to the gray face below him. "Kill you dead. Uh huh, that's what I said. It's no big thing to me. You don't want to live no more, Uncle?"

Suddenly he patted Sol on the shoulder, and the touch made the Pawnbroker flinch. Murillio laughed merrily.